I work as a screenwriter for film & TV. In a former life I was a media specialist & campaign ad writer. Follow me on Twitter @MarkHughesFilms; add me on Google+; and read my question and answers about film, comics, and more on Quora.

Admittedly, it was a very strong year for Oscar contenders, making it difficult to decide who to leave out and who to invite in. And overall the Oscars got a lot right. But what they got, they got very wrong.

The most high-profile of those snubs is, obviously, Hanks in what is probably his best performance to date. Likewise, Redford delivered what is widely considered one of his finest performances, which is saying a lot. And Thompson was presumed to be almost a sure thing for a nomination, in a role that even most critics of her film still recognized as Oscar-worthy.

Not all of those snubs could’ve been included without pushing out other worthy contenders, of course. However, I feel that in the lead acting categories at least one of the male and one of the female performers should’ve received nods in place of Bruce Dern and Meryl Streep. I know that’s not going to be a popular opinion, and I happen to have loved Nebraska, but at the end of the day I have to feel the lack of nominations for those other performances were more glaring and problematic. And in the supporting categories, I was surprised to see the August: Osage County nomination pushing out Johansson’s undeniably incredible, transformative performance or Spencer’s gut-wrenching, emotionally truthful and nuanced turn.

The Best Picture category had one particularly huge omission. Short Term 12 was the year’s best film. But even lacking full agreement on that status, it was easily one of the greatest film achievements of 2013. Indeed, it was widely recognized as such by critics (it has an almost perfect RT score, such was the near-unanimous praise), audiences (it won numerous audience awards at festivals, and has high approval ratings from mainstream theater audiences), and other film organizations. When someone claims that modern cinema isn’t as good at telling stories or as emotionally honest and powerful as cinema in previous eras, Short Term 12 is precisely the sort of film that debunks that myopic sort of thinking. This is filmmaking of the sort everyone claims to wait for and wish was more common, and the lack of a Best Picture nomination is the single biggest snub and error of the Oscars this year. That the film also deserved recognition for the amazing performances, screenplay, and directing, yet in actuality received not a single Oscar nomination in any category at all, makes the omission even worse. It’s the sort of shocking mistake that will stand out for years to come as one of the worst in Oscar history.

It’s disconcerting to see a large number of truly great films being entirely ignored by the Oscars in every category. Besides the shocking snubbing of Short Term 12, films like The Place Beyond the Pines, Mud, and Fruitvale Station seem to have simply been forgotten or ignored because of higher profile films that came out closer to the time of Oscar balloting and so were more on voters’ minds. No doubt, the actual nominees list has several great films and a few very very good films. But are there a few that shouldn’t really have pushed aside the above list of ignored pictures? Yes, honestly, there are a few nominees that might have deserved nominations in other categories and which are praiseworthy films, but that don’t really have a stronger claim to “best film of the entire year” than do films like Short Term 12, The Place Beyond the Pines, Mud, or Fruitvale Station.

Even sadder is, because of the Academy’s shortsightedness in nominating only the films that are most recently on their minds and that got the biggest awards-season push by the studios, those other films probably won’t find the bigger audiences they deserve. And that’s a real shame, because a lot of people who love great filmmaking and want to see the truly best films of the year are going to miss out on several of them now.

Moving on, is anyone else a bit tired of the fact Best Makeup and Hairstyling constantly nominates only three films? That short-listing is why we get absurd situations like last year’s three-film nominations where The Iron Lady gets a nod primarily because — let’s be honest — one performer was styled to look a lot like the real person she played, but films like The Artist, X-Men: First Class, The Help, and even Red Riding Hood are totally ignored because this category has the ridiculous practice of only nominating three or less films. Yet makeup and hairstyling is one of the categories where in fact every year there are so many great viable contenders, and it makes no sense at all to restrict it like this.

Anyway, yeah, Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is now an Oscar nominated film, but apparently there’s just not room enough for the makeup and hairstyling of the freaking Hobbit. Go figure.

For Best Original Score, the one glaring omission is Daniel Pemberton for The Counselor. While I gave the film itself a very mixed, mostly negative review, there shouldn’t be any doubt that Pemberton’s score is Oscar-worthy. I rarely actually complain about omissions in this category, largely because it’s the one category where the Oscars usually do a good job of getting it right, but on occasion there’s a musical score that stands out so much I can’t fathom how it was overlooked, and that’s certainly the case this year.

It’s difficult to really complain much about the nominations for Best Visual Effects, because undeniably each of the nominees did superb jobs in this category. That said, two films really stand out as omissions that I can’t help feel are too important to have been overlooked.

The first is Pacific Rim, which didn’t just use spectacular visual effects but also made brilliant choices about color and light and darkness, that painted pictures with different styles and visual impact for very nuanced storytelling purposes. This wasn’t just visual effects to achieve realism or “wow” factor, these are images and frames that could hang in an art gallery. The contrasting impressions created by the dark and gloomy, confused contexts of the underwater fighting are meant to convey an entirely different feeling and loss of space/size as compared to the bright neons and glass in Hong Kong that demonstrate the scale of the battles and impart a sense of literal loss of modernity and civilization as we see all of this structural achievement wiped away and torn down in the face of a sort of prehistoric animalistic brutality. Then there is the pure heightened realism and literalism of the flashbacks to the battle in Japan during broad daylight, and the contrast to the other battle imagery is remarkable and accentuates the emotional impact of a child being pursued and facing imminent death at the hands of the very real threats tearing her city apart.

Comparing that to the admittedly terrific spectacle but otherwise pretty typical/standard sci-fi quality that dominates the visual effects choices of Star Trek Into Darkness, I have to feel it was a major mistake to omit Pacific Rim.

The other film that I was very surprised didn’t make the cut for its visual effects is Man of Steel. The main reason for my surprise here is, this is a superhero film that attempted a type of realism in its superhero effects that we haven’t really seen before, certainly not on this scale or to this degree. Granted, many people felt the last half-hour of the film was too dominated by a CGI-fest of destruction, but that’s a separate argument from whether that CGI-fest was conducted in a manner that set it apart from anything else done in superhero cinema this year. Man of Steel achieved a sense of these events happening in the here and now, a weight to the events and a consequence that made it more than just great CGI visuals. The storytelling relied heavily on the realism of the effects, and the only other film this year that focused so heavily on creating so pure a level of realism for the visual effects was Gravity. As such, and for the application of that level of realism and skill within the superhero genre as never before, I think Man of Steel earned a seat at the Oscar table.

I can’t help but feel compelled to note, this is the second time in a row now that a superhero film with Christopher Nolan’s name on it was 100% shut out of the Oscars in every single category. In the aftermath of 2008′s The Dark Knight generating such surprise and outcry when it failed to get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, the Academy changed the nominating rules, but then proceeded to shut out Nolan’s superhero films from any nominations. 2012′s The Dark Knight Rises got zero Oscar nods, becoming only the second Batman film out of six to get shut out of the Academy Awards since Tim Burton launched the modern franchise in 1989 (Batman & Robin is the other that failed to garner a single nomination). So Man of Steel being ignored makes me at least wonder if the apparent bias among some Academy voters against Christopher Nolan has struck again, enough so with just enough voters to be the final straw that made the difference.

For the category Best Adapted Screenplay, I understand why film sequels are counted but I don’t agree that it’s the best practice. If a film based on characters who appeared previously is grounds for calling a script an adaptation, then why aren’t original film scripts adapting true events considered adaptations as well? Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I say. Anyway, in this category I must mention — since they do include screenplays that are adaptations of previous films or characters — Short Term 12 as the one major omission that means the Academy got it wrong here. Destin Cretton adapted his own previous short film, and the screenplay reads as perfectly as any I’ve ever read, the characters are as alive and have as unique a voice as anyone you’ll meet in real life. It’s a shame that the Oscars got it so very wrong when it comes to this film and all the ways he deserved to be honored.

Turn the page to keep reading about how the Oscars got it wrong this year!

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For me her and Short Term 12 were indeed the best movies of 2013, and I guess you might have not watched the former since you don’t make note of it. Joaquin Phoenix has the best performance of the year and in his career, big disappointment he got snubbed (at least Hanks is recognized).

I did indeed see “Her,” it’s on my list of the year’s best films. And Phoenix’s performance was remarkable, for sure. There were really so many great performances this year that weren’t nominated — “The Place Beyond the Pines” had several Oscar-worthy performances, “Mud” likewise could’ve easily deserved a few nominations, everybody in “Short Term 12″ was Oscar-worthy, and so on. I tried to pick the few really key performances that stood out like sore thumbs for being missing among the nominees. I don’t know if you’ve seen “Captain Phillips,” but watching the way Hanks’ hands are shaking and his eyes are wide, pupils seemingly dilated, from the adrenaline and fear, and the entire portion of the film trapped in the rescue boat, were probably Hanks’ finest moments on film, and then comes that very last scene when in the aftermath he begins to have a full breakdown — it was like watching documentary footage, the emotional outpouring was remarkable to the point I think my jaw was literally slack in awe of what I was witnessing.

I don’t think “Her” is likely to win BP due to the fact it’s missing a few key other nominations that, 9 times out of 10, a film has to have in order to win BP. But I did think it was a great film and one of the year’s best.

Yes, Hanks was at his finest in Captain Philips despite not being much impressed by the film itself myself. And there was Saving Mr. Banks too. It’s such a shame all these worthy contenders just being overlooked.

Mud and The Place Beyond The Pines both actually first released in 2012 limited, so I guess they don’t count this time naturally (if that’s the case shame it didn’t last time either)

I was somewhat surprised to see Short Term 12 mentioned in a Forbes article without a discussion of money and the academy.

My daughter was one of the producers of Short Term 12 and an internal champion who helped to make sure the film got made.

It was done on a shoe string, the original budget was under $ 500. And the distributor who bought it did not have a lot of money for promotion.

The Oscars are about the industry, and marketing, not about the quality of the film. Generally speaking, whatever the Weinsteins are pushing has the inside track.

It is good that Short Term 12 at least gets mentioned in articles like this and has won many other awards, because without the promotion budget they will never make it with the academy. Unfortunately, money talks.

Please express my thanks and my great respect to your daughter for the film. “Short Term 12″ is without any doubt the best film I saw all year, it’s just an incredible experience. I hope you also saw my full review of the film. If not, you can read it here, it’s one of the most positive reviews I’ve ever given to any film:

I couldn’t agree with you more about Short Term 12. It’s an amazing film with performers that deliver more than awarding-worthy performances. It really took me by surprise. Now I’m excited to see more films you liked. This movie is just what movies should be – well scripted, well directed, perfectly acted, with a story told in a way that makes people happy to have been part of the experience. I wish it were on the best picture list, too. Having read the perhaps biased novel, The Men Who Would Be King, it’s not surprising Short Term 12 was overlooked. Money is often what supposed best pictures are made of, not quality. Well, hurray for Short Term 12, anyway. It will have a happy cult following and hopefully make an impression on enough people to allow those involved with the film to be able to continue developing their superlative skills.